


leave the blue light on

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 22:19:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12177621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “What the hell do youwant, Rachel.”She’s trying this new thing called honesty, these days. “To see you.”





	leave the blue light on

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: reference to suicide by overdose]
> 
> _I want to be wrong, but / no one here wants to fight me like you do / Combat baby / Come back, baby / Fight off the lethargy / Don't go quietly_

She can’t believe that Sarah is living in the same house.

Well. There are so many things Rachel can’t believe in, these days. She has a list, in the small and shameful notebook that’s currently buried at the absolute bottom of her suitcase. It’s on the page after the list of pop culture references she doesn’t understand, and before the list of things she has tried and enjoyed. She hates the notebook. Sometimes she imagines moving through the endless desert of her life without the notebook, and she feels like she’s standing on the edge of a cliff over a drop.

It’s at the bottom of her suitcase. Her suitcase is next to the door, under the coatrack that carries the coats of only two people. Rachel is sitting at Siobhan’s kitchen table, holding a carton of milk against her face.

Sarah, leaning against the counter, keeps looking over at Rachel and making one of three facial expressions: pained, amused and pained, or deeply sad.

“It’s gone warm,” Rachel says.

“Great,” Sarah says. “Don’t know what you think I’m gonna do about that.”

Rachel puts the milk down on the kitchen table. It’s covered with a thin sheen of its own sweat. The pain in her face does not exponentially increase or decrease once the carton is gone, which says a lot about its effectiveness.

“Look,” Sarah says, and stops. She bounces her hip a few times against the counter and Rachel remembers, again, that this is Sarah _Manning_ , and her heart twists around in what has to be the most it’s felt in months. Sarah Manning. Hair long enough to fall over her shoulders in tangled twists. Smeared eyeshadow. She’s wearing a dark green sweater, which surprises Rachel over and over again. Rachel keeps expecting dark leather. Rachel keeps looking at her waiting for wounds, and can’t find any. No cuts, no bruises.

Lucky her.

“You deserved it, yeah?” Sarah says weakly. “You – after all this, you can’t come back with a bloody _suitcase_ and just – you can’t.”

Rachel stares at her, eyebrows slightly raised, just to see what she’ll do. Beautifully: Sarah spirals deeper into the clutch of her own panic.

“Helpin’ us get Helena back doesn’t _fix_ —” she starts, and “how was I supposed to know you would—” and “it’s not like I have frozen bloody peas, do I?”

“No,” Rachel says, “I suppose you wouldn’t.”

Sarah stops rocking back and forth. “What the hell do you _want_ , Rachel.”

She’s trying this new thing called honesty, these days. “To see you.”

Sarah turns her back, walks over to the other counter and rests her weight on it. Rachel studies the slope of her shoulders. Atlas in retirement. _How does it feel to let the world go_ , she thinks, but doesn’t say it out loud in case Sarah would pretend she doesn’t understand.

“What if I don’t want to see you,” Sarah says.

“Then I’ll leave.”

“Bullshit,” Sarah says. “You never cared about anyone else’s feelings. Not once. Don’t act like you give a shit about my feelings _now_.”

“I’d leave,” Rachel says. “If you really wanted me to go. Is that what you want, Sarah?”

Somewhere, a clock ticks.

“Where the hell have you been,” Sarah says, voice small.

“Vienna.”

“ _Vienna_ ,” Sarah says, packing enough meaning into the syllables that Rachel is almost tempted to write _Vienna?_ down in her notebook – as if it has some terrible significance that she wasn’t aware of when she closed her eyes and put her finger down randomly on a European map.

“Yes,” Rachel says. “And you’ve been here.”

Sarah turns back around, apparently bolstered enough by her own anger. She rests her weight against the counter again, hands curled around the edge; Rachel drinks in the familiarity, all the pieces around the edges of Sarah that are like a version of Rachel that Rachel no longer owns.

“I’ve been here,” Sarah says. “And you’ve seen me. So now what. If you say you want to see Kira you’re out on your arse, I don’t care why.”

Rachel sighs through her nose, slow and long. “What is it that you think I’m going to _do_ to her,” she says, exhausted.

“You know what I think?” Sarah says. “I think you found another shitty corporation just like DYAD, and you’re working for them now, and when they say _jump_ you’ll say _how high_ and when they say _go kidnap a kid_ you’ll get on a bloody plane and you’ll come here. That’s what I think.”

“Steffl,” Rachel says.

“What?”

“It’s a department store,” Rachel says.

This is a terrible thing to think, and she would never – _never_ – give any indication of it to Sarah, but: part of the reason Rachel took the job is because of how she thought Sarah might react to it. She’s considered, so many times – while taking the train to work, while lying in bed, while spreading out papers over her desk – the exact expression Sarah might make. Rachel Duncan, nemesis, shark, stageshow villain: working on the board of a _department_ store.

Sarah is making the expression now. It is extremely, ridiculously satisfying.

“I don’t think they’d appreciate it if I brought back a child,” Rachel says, ruthlessly strangling her own humor so it doesn’t appear in her voice. “Although the new Gucci children’s line _does_ need more crowd testing.”

“Is this funny to you?” Sarah says, voice rising in self-righteous swoops. “This all a big laugh? Thought you’d come back here and _laugh_ at me, Rachel? At all of us? Huh?”

“No,” Rachel says. The humor evaporates. “I don’t know what I wanted. Actually—” _I was hoping you would know_ , she thinks, realizes the words are lined up on her tongue, discards them. No new words come in to fill the silence. Rachel touches her fingertips to the bruise on her face, the one Sarah left when she opened the door and saw Rachel and punched her in the jaw. It hurts. Of course it hurts. She doesn’t know what she was expecting.

Sarah moves to the fridge, opens it, grabs a juice box and slaps it on the table. She puts the milk back. She sits down across from Rachel again; her leg jitters under the table. Rachel picks up the juice box and presses it against her face and doesn’t feel better.

“Would apologize,” Sarah says, “but you like that shit, don’t you.”

“Well,” Rachel says, “not after he tried to choke me to death, no.”

“Oh. Shit. Sorry.”

The word falls out of Sarah’s mouth and hits the table and stays there, in the small pool of condensation left from the milk carton. They both stare at it. It doesn’t grow any bigger, or mean anything else, but one of them said it and now it’s in the room with them.

“Yes,” Rachel says, which is – horribly – the best she can do. _Don’t ask it_ , she thinks to herself, pleading, and then she asks it: “How are you faring, in that department.”

“In the department of getting slapped during sex,” Sarah says, actually sounding amused. “Great, thanks.” She sighs. Looks at the table. “Yeah, I dunno.” She shrugs a shoulder. “You got another boytoy, then?”

“No,” Rachel says. “I…” she sighs. “I find myself seeking a deeper understanding.”

Sarah doesn’t say anything. When Rachel looks at her, she sees Sarah staring at a grain in the wood like it’s a labyrinth she is trying to decipher. _It’s a straight line_ , Rachel thinks of saying, but she doesn’t think her advice would be appreciated.

“And so I’m here,” Rachel says.

“They just don’t get it,” Sarah says, in the smallest possible voice. Her knee hits the table – she winces – Rachel does her the small kindness of pretending she didn’t notice. “Don’t want to explain it. Need them to understand.”

“I understand,” Rachel says.

Sarah physically shudders – once, a short sharp shake – and looks up. “No you don’t.”

On the counter, where it’s plugged into the wall, Sarah’s phone gives one angry buzz. Rachel closes her mouth, from where it had opened to argue the point – to fight her way into Sarah Manning’s good graces, for reasons she wishes she didn’t understand. Across the table Sarah has gone completely still, eyes wide, staring at Rachel like she’s only just realized that she’s a prey animal and Rachel is a wolf. _I’m not_ , Rachel wants to tell her, _not really, not anymore, I’m only a person like any other person_ , but she doesn’t.

“It’s 2:20,” Sarah says, dazed. “I have to get—” she stops. Anger slides its way back onto her face, comfortable there.

“You have to pick up Kira,” Rachel says. “And you don’t want me to know where she goes to school, and you don’t want me to see her.”

Sarah shrugs a shoulder, uncomfortably.

“It’s alright,” Rachel says. (It isn’t.) With effort she drags on her smile – the uniform, the one she brings out at meetings about summer fashions and marketing, the one she used to bring out at meetings about whether her siblings should be allowed to overdose on pills. She leaves it hanging there. She should go; she doesn’t go. Sarah doesn’t tell her to go.

They sit there across the table. A minute passes. Sarah’s phone buzzes again; she winces, but doesn’t move. Her folded hands twitch on the tabletop.

Rachel takes in a breath through her nose, shoves it out again. She stands up and moves to the grocery list pinned to the fridge – peanut butter, bread, milk, the word _fruit_ scrawled out in an uncertain hand – and writes a phone number down at the bottom. “That’s the number,” she says, “for my apartment here.” _Call it_ , she thinks of saying, a snarl, an order, like Sarah has ever – _ever_ – obeyed orders. Maybe she would, now. Maybe she’s changed too.

She leaves the pen there so long that the ink starts to bloom, and then she caps it and puts it back on the countertop. “In case,” she says, and goes for the door. Her suitcase is still standing there. Rachel wraps her hand around its handle and rolls it after her, the sound echoing against the sound of Sarah not following.

* * *

She doesn’t think Sarah will call.

She does.

She doesn’t.

She goes out to dinner at a restaurant she used to favor; she watches people walk through the streets. The odds of someone recognizing her are so much higher, here – Janika Zingler lived in Salzburg, Anna Gruber in Linz. Here in Toronto there are five of Rachel’s siblings, by her last count. Remarkable. Terrifying. If someone charges in during dinner and thinks she’s Sarah she’ll – she’ll – god, she doesn’t know. It would be drastic, which would be in character.

After dinner Rachel takes too long walking back to the apartment, in case of…whatever it is she isn’t thinking about. Anger pulses in her chest for a while, comforting and warm; how dare Sarah need this less than Rachel does, how _dare_ she have not chased Rachel to the door, saying _wait_ over and over with fervent desperation. Rachel wanted her to. Rachel knows her desires are strange, but they have always been strange and she isn’t uncomfortable. She exhales and her breath plumes in the air. No one looks at her and says Sarah’s name.

When she unlocks the door to the apartment, Sarah is sitting on the couch. God. She’s still wearing that sweater, and slumped as she is it gives Rachel all of Sarah’s throat and her collarbone besides. She has her boots up on the pristine white of what used to be Rachel’s couch. There is no dust, because someone still comes and cleans here every few days, but the apartment echoes with where the dust should be.

“Again?” Rachel says, and closes the door.

Sarah laughs, a loose angry sound, and Rachel realizes that she’s been drinking. Yes, there: a half-empty bottle hanging loose in her fist. “Thought you’d forgotten,” Sarah says. “You weren’t even there.”

“Someone had to scrub your blood out of my shower,” Rachel says. She unwinds her scarf, hangs her coat on the coatrack, straightens her dress. Dark blue. The part of Rachel’s brain that has neatly switched from patent law to influencing trends whispers something about blacks and whites and colors and changing. She ignores it. (That’s a lie.)

“Left a note,” Sarah says, “saying where I am. In case you’re gonna try shit.” Rachel makes her way over to the kitchen area to pour herself a drink. God, she wants to take her boots off, but she can’t bend over in front of Sarah. Sarah Manning. She can’t do that in front of Sarah Manning, who is here in her apartment.

“Like a suicide note,” Sarah says, and laughs again. Takes another drink, the line of her throat. She hasn’t even brought a glass. _Animal_ , Rachel thinks; she hates the way it comes out fond.

“Do you consider this suicidal?” she says idly, pouring herself a vodka lime.

“Well,” Sarah says, “I brought a gun.”

Rachel is vividly aware of all of her muscles; she doesn’t tense, but each gesture carries its own deliberate intent. “Murder suicide?” she says. “Or were you going to shoot yourself on my couch and then blame me? Because our fingerprints _are_ different.”

When she looks over, Sarah is smiling. Her head is collapsed against the back of the couch. She is – as always – the most alive thing Rachel has ever seen.

“It was a joke,” Sarah says, head pillowed against her arm, arm slung over so Rachel can watch Sarah’s fingers idly twitch. “It was a shitty joke. I thought we were making shitty jokes.”

“You should have warned me,” Rachel says. “I would have left out a pencil sharpener.”

Sarah laughs, again, a loud rough sound that echoes and goes on. Rachel sits down on Sarah’s left side, takes a drink, hilariously – ironically – sobers. She keeps realizing that she loves Sarah more than she loves anything in the world, just because she has nothing else she could possibly love. Every time that thought comes up she buries it, and it keeps coming back. It truly is remarkable how terrible Rachel is at keeping things buried. All of her graveyards emptying and filling like tidepools.

“You miss it, right,” Sarah says, sitting up, folding her legs tight to her chest. Her boots are still on the couch. _Smear them_ , Rachel thinks, _ruin this_.

“Of course,” she says. “Don’t you?”

Sarah puts the bottle down on the ground, lets one leg dangle to follow it. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah. Why we’re both here, innit?”

“That must be it,” Rachel says quietly, and she takes another drink.

“’course it is,” Sarah says. “We’re both pieces of shit and we miss when that mattered. I get you. Wish I didn’t, but. I do.”

Rachel drains the glass, puts it down on her coffeetable. “I have never understood you,” she says. “Not once.”

Sarah’s other foot drops to the ground. “Why aren’t you dating anyone,” she says.

Rachel looks at her sideways. “I already told you,” she says.

A smirk crumples up the corner of Sarah’s mouth. “I know,” she says, and leans forward, and kisses Rachel on the mouth.

It’s an awkward angle: both of them sitting with their feet planted firmly on the ground, twisted towards each other like plants lacking trellis. Sarah is holding Rachel’s face in her hands. She could snap Rachel’s neck. She could choke her – that seems fated. Rachel tangles her hands in Sarah’s hair and pulls her closer, just in case Sarah really does plan to press down.

She’s so warm. How long has Rachel been wanting this? Sarah’s mouth pressing against hers, the two of them settling into this easy rhythm. Since she walked in here? Since Sarah tilted her head back and bared her throat? She slides her hands under Sarah’s sweater, walks her fingers along the ladder of Sarah’s ribs. Since she walked into that operating room and saw Sarah strapped down? Since Sarah pressed her to the ground and held a gun to her temple? Since they first stood next to each other in Rachel’s office and Sarah said _I’m not interested_ and she’d been the only one to say that in a way that made Rachel want to change her mind?

Sarah bites Rachel’s lip and it isn’t too hard. Rachel tugs Sarah’s hair, lightly. Her whole body is humming with how well they fit together.

Sarah breaks the kiss. Her forehead is against Rachel’s breathing rough. “You,” she says. “You.”

Rachel tilts her head back, kisses the space where Sarah’s chin meets her throat. Soft skin that tastes like sweat. She bites – not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough that Sarah makes a sound. “Oh,” she says. “Oh shit.”

“Sarah,” Rachel whispers to the skin above Sarah’s carotid. She bites down, again. “Shit,” Sarah says, “shit shit shit—”

And Sarah is in Rachel’s lap, the whole warm weight of her, kissing Rachel on the lips like she is starving – desperate – everything Rachel has ever wanted her to be. She rolls her hips forward and Rachel is on fire, her veins are sparking, she wants Sarah. She wants Sarah. If Rachel could have Sarah here, touchable, controlled, she would give up almost anything.

She puts her hands on Sarah’s back, feels the flex of Sarah’s spine as Sarah drags the kiss on and on. Rachel wonders if Sarah is starving for air as much as she is, if she needs this more than air the way that Rachel does. The taste of top-shelf bourbon. Rachel drank that vodka, that citrus; her mouth must taste like licking a scalpel. Good. She works her hands higher, feels the skin of Sarah’s shoulderblades like wingbones under her hands. No bra.

“Presumptuous,” she whispers against Sarah’s lips.

“Yeah,” Sarah whispers back, the word shaking and almost hysterical. “I know.” She says: “Touch me.”

Rachel does. Nails down Sarah’s shoulders, just to feel the way Sarah shivers against her; she works her hands around, feels the smooth soft curves of Sarah’s breasts. Pinches a nipple. “ _Ah_ ,” Sarah says. It feels good; Rachel does it again. Sarah whines. “I want,” she says, hands clenching and kneading at Rachel’s shoulders. “I want, I—”

“I know,” Rachel says. She cups Sarah’s breasts in both hands and strokes her thumbs against Sarah’s nipples, feather-light.

“You know?”

“Yes,” Rachel says, and she drags her fingernails lightly down Sarah’s ribs in the way she likes. “Oh,” Sarah says, surprised and dizzy. Her head hits Rachel’s shoulder; her breathing is frantic and heavy. Rachel doesn’t know if Sarah chose her blind spot on purpose, but right now Rachel can’t see her at all.

“They don’t get it,” Sarah says into Rachel’s shoulder, almost too quiet to hear. Rachel touches Sarah’s breasts, the smooth soft skin of her stomach, drags her thumbs over Sarah’s hipbones. “They think it can all go back to normal, but it can’t, it – _ah_ – I can’t – I need—”

She shudders, turns her head, and bites Rachel’s neck. “Everywhere I go,” Rachel breathes, voice shakier than she would like – she _wants_ – “they think that I’m just another person, like I never killed someone, like I never sat on top of the world—”

“—smashed God’s face in with a canister,” Sarah whispers. Rachel gets her hand inside of Sarah’s jeans, shivers down a sound in the pit of her throat: Sarah is wet, Sarah wants this, Sarah needs this, Sarah’s entire body is bowed towards Rachel because she needs Rachel too. “Felt good, no one knows, no one else saw it—”

Rachel fucks her. Sarah Manning, shuddering, rolling her hips forward over and over like it’s the end of the world. Like she’s dying, starving, falling apart. “I think about you,” Rachel breathes into the tangled mess of her hair. “You tore my entire world apart to keep your daughter safe, I think about you.”

Sarah groans, the sound eerie and sad. She clenches her hands on either side of Rachel, fingers twisting in the fabric of the couch; the two of them are caging each other, the two of them are symbiotic. Rachel tells Sarah the story of herself, every piece she’s spent months pulling out and holding up to the light. She takes Sarah apart with her hands and puts her back together with her mouth and it is so _very_ close to feeling like God.

Sarah’s mouth is open, panting wet breaths against Rachel’s neck; she’s going to come, if Rachel lets her. “Say my name,” Rachel whispers into Sarah’s ear, a sharp hiss. “Say it.”

“Rachel,” Sarah says, “can you just – god – _Rachel_ —”

“No,” Rachel says. “Not good enough, Sarah—” (please) “—again.”

“Rachel,” Sarah says, sounding wrecked. “Rachel.”

Rachel stops moving her fingers. _Make me real_ , she thinks at Sarah, her fingers trembling slightly, _you know what I want, you’ve always known, make me real._

“Rachel Duncan,” Sarah says, and Rachel hoarsely says “good” and thrusts into her again.

“Rachel Duncan,” Sarah says, and Rachel lets out a whine she doesn’t want and can’t help. Sarah laughs, shaky and high. “You need this,” she says. “You need this too, Rachel _Duncan_ , _ah_ shit, Rachel Rachel Rachel come on—”

She shudders, and Rachel hears the sound of fabric creaking, and then Sarah goes limp. Rachel pulls her hand out, looks at the glistening of her fingers. She doesn’t know what to do with it, so she just holds her hand out and feels Sarah’s breaths move through her.

Sarah’s hand lands on Rachel’s thigh, slides up her skirt. Rachel grabs it, watches her fingers smear along Sarah’s wrist. “No,” she says hoarsely.

Sarah’s fingernails dig into the skin of her thigh. She sits up; her eyes are bright, her smile is terrible and sharp and Rachel wants to put her mouth against it. “Come on,” she says. “I’m good at it.”

“I can’t anymore,” Rachel says, “you broke me,” and she puts her other hand on the back of Sarah’s head so she can smash their lips back together.

Sarah’s mouth opens soundless against hers and Rachel licks her way into it, presses her tongue so hard against the sharp points of Sarah’s teeth that she thinks it’ll bleed. She wants it to bleed. She wants, desperately, for Sarah to get down on her knees and take Rachel entirely apart – but she can’t, she wasn’t lying about that. Her body isn’t the same body that met Sarah in that office. Sarah did this to her. Sarah is the only person to ever permanently change Rachel, besides Rachel herself.

Sarah breaks the kiss, her forehead still against Rachel’s. “You’re lonely,” she says, voice rough and sad and furious with itself. “Right?”

Rachel presses her mouth back against Sarah’s – just for a moment, the world’s smallest and saddest confession.

“All these people,” Sarah says, leaning back, “and you’re still lonely. What the hell is wrong with you, Rachel?”

Rachel tips Sarah’s chin up with her hand, rubs her thumb along Sarah’s lip to smear her own lip gloss off of it. “Not as much as you’d think,” she says. “It’s only that I’ve forgotten how to be a person, and everyone else knows.”

Sarah laughs, once, a flash of teeth, her eyes shining and close to spilling over. She looks away from Rachel and scrubs the back of her hand over her mouth, like she doesn’t realize she’s doing it. “I’m drunk,” she says. “I had to get drunk for this.”

Rachel didn’t. She thinks of saying _I don’t think you had to either, I think this is something that has always lived inside of you_ , but it’s Sarah’s job to say what Rachel wants and not the other way around. Rachel only reflects what Sarah wants back at her. _What the hell is wrong with me? Not as much as you’d think._

“So,” she says, “sobriety, or the rest of the bottle?”

Sarah still won’t look at her. “I don’t know,” she says, rough. “I’ll figure it out, yeah?”

Rachel doesn’t say anything.

“You’re staying, right,” Sarah says, and she finally looks back at Rachel. “In Toronto, you’re staying.”

“I have a job, Sarah,” Rachel says, exhausted. “I have a life.”

“I know,” Sarah says. “But you’re lonely.”

The old ghost of anger chokes up Rachel’s throat, and she settles her hands on Sarah’s hips. “You have to say it,” she says quietly.

Sarah’s throat works. “You’re lonely,” she says. “Like me.”

Her breathing jumps under the heels of Rachel’s hands. Her skin is warm. They should be exactly the same temperature, but Sarah is warm – every fire Rachel has ever chased or wanted to chase or dreamed that she was brave enough to start.

“The end of the week,” Rachel says. “That’s all I can promise you.”

“And then you’ll go back to Vienna,” Sarah says, “and think about me.” The last four words come out wry with self-loathing. Rachel rubs her thumbs over Sarah’s hipbones again, because it’s soft, because it makes Sarah spark with discomfort and that feels good. Because making Sarah feel good feels good.

“Yes,” Rachel says.

“Even if you don’t want to.”

Rachel usually wants to.

“Even if I don’t want to,” she echoes. She reflects.

“Even if you hate yourself for it.”

“I always hate myself,” Rachel says. “I might as well hate myself and think about you.”

Sarah makes a choked-up sound and kisses Rachel again. She strokes the curves of Rachel’s hips, her ribs, her breasts. Rachel kisses her back, and imagines it: living in this apartment, a toy for Sarah to take out of its box and put back again. It’s only a little smaller than the life Rachel spent her whole life living. She could be someone else’s toy again, someone else’s idea of what Rachel Duncan is supposed to be. It probably wouldn’t even hurt. Every time Sarah sank into the depths of her own self-loathing she could come skulking here, and Rachel would take her apart, and it would feel better than anything Rachel has in her hollow self-built life. Would it be worth it? Just for a few moments of this, Sarah’s body hot against her, Sarah’s face wet with the tears they’re both going to pretend aren’t there?

Yes, it would be.

It would be worth it.

Rachel gets her hands under Sarah’s sweater again, feels the way Sarah has left herself too bare for her. Sarah’s heart rams itself against her ribs, constantly fighting its way towards the palm of Rachel’s hand. Sarah’s own hands are all over Rachel, everywhere, warm.

In the bag at Sarah’s feet, her phone buzzes. It keeps buzzing. Sarah wilts and her hands stop but her mouth just keeps going, greedy and desperate.

Rachel stops kissing her. “Go,” she says, sounding tired.

“No,” Sarah says, and puts her mouth back against Rachel’s. Rachel leans back again.

“Next time,” she says, “turn your phone off.”

Sarah studies her and then runs a frustrated hand through her hair, leans down, scoops up her phone. “Yeah,” she says, slipping off of Rachel’s lap and pacing in the vague direction of Rachel’s bathroom. “Hey, Helena. No, I’m not – oh, yeah, they do that, you – oh, now? They’re gonna tire themselves out, promise, I – no, it’s—”

She closes the door. Rachel sits on the couch and closes her eyes for one second, leans down to grab the bottle of bourbon that is still sitting by Sarah’s bag – like it’ll make her feel better, maybe, to put her mouth against the bottle that pressed against Sarah’s mouth.

Sarah’s bag is gaping open, because Sarah grabbed her phone out of it. Rachel stares straight into the muzzle of a pistol thrown haphazardly into the main pocket. Her hand tightens around the neck of the bottle. She can hear Sarah in the bathroom, still, murmuring some vague consolation to Helena.

Rachel shudders, breathes in through her nose, lets it out. She nudges Sarah’s bag shut. She grabs the bottle, and drinks.

**Author's Note:**

> We used to leave the blue lights on  
> And there was a beat  
> Ever since you have been gone it's all caffeine-free  
> Faux punk fatigues  
> Said it all before  
> They try to kick it, their feet fall asleep  
> Get no harm done no  
> None of them want to fight me  
> \--"Combat Baby," Metric
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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